Rachel Maddow Gets the Last Laugh on Trump’s Tax Return Reveal

An hour and a half after she posted a tantalizing tweet, Rachel Maddow appeared on air with two pages from President Donald Trump’s 2005 tax returns. But before keying viewers into the contents of the documents, Maddow gave a lengthy preamble that many on social media found … frustrating.

But according to Nielsen data, Tuesday’s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show was the most-watched of all time, with 4.1 million viewers. It also beat out every other cable TV show that aired that night, including ABC and Fox programming during the 9 p.m. hour.

The show also drew more younger viewers to cable news — according to Vulture, the show “notched a 1.0 rating among adults under 50, more than doubling her usual demographic skew and tripling the demo rating for usual cable news leader The O’Reilly Factor (0.32).” It’s almost like Maddow knew exactly what she was doing.